It shows up in so many different ways in each of our lives, doesn't it? This personal example of "brave" strikes a chord in my heart every day - the profound courage of orphaned or abandoned children being adopted into families. With merely the clothes on their backs and a few sparse items in their possession (some items sent to them by their new families), they pack it all up and say goodbye to everything they've known.
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Everything.
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With intertwined excitement and uncertainty about the new prospects for their lives and futures, they wave off their friends and their nannies - all of the people who've become their "normal" out of necessity - and they say goodbye to every known surrounding - all for the promise of a family.
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So bravely, they go.
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This picture hits my heart harder on what our family calls "Gotcha Day" of each passing year. It's the day that we got her, and she got us. And today - now knowing our child so well - I can see right through her initial expressions to how terrified she must have been. I feel like God puts special blinders on adoptive parents so they are supernaturally able to look beyond the fear and march in to meeting their children with compassionate confidence and unwavering reassurance. At least, that was me.
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I am certain our daughter had no possible concept of what was to come...probably the encouragement of caretakers painting a beautiful, bright picture of America, telling her to be on her best behavior so we wouldn't send her back. She was on the brink of tears but didn't shed one. We thank God that it took only moments for our daughter to have felt safety with us, thanks to our reserved and reassuring approach, along with the gift of a new backpack filled with little toys and food. We saw smiles soon. It doesn't always happen that way.
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She refers to that time in her life - when she came home - as being a "baby." She was almost six years old and claims she couldn't speak yet - likely because she hadn't found her voice in an institutional setting, coupled with a tremendous language barrier. She regressed in many ways, which was completely understandable. I'm not sure she knew there was even a difference between girls and boys, and she certainly didn't know she had something called a "birthday." She couldn't do a million things that she knows how to do now, simply because she'd never been exposed to them. It still stuns me that she didn't know how to use a crayon when we met.
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Four years later, we're looking at a second grader, a Sunday-schooler, a soccer player, a baseball player, a YouTube video maker, a leader, a dancer, an emerging reader, an artist, a friend to many, an LOL lover, a great protector, an eater of all-things-healthy, a determined little girl with a voice to be heard, a smile that can light up the world, and more important than anything else - a family member. She dreams about becoming a teacher, or a hair stylist, or a YouTube star, but mostly - a mom.
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Yes, this is what brave looks like. We thank God for revealing it to us through our precious children. On this day in our corner of the world, it's about our youngest and her journey home. And we're fueled with the renewed passion that children belong in families, not in orphanages. Lord knows, there are so many reasons why we could have said no, and it's not all "rosy" by a long stretch, but we are so richly blessed by this child's life in ours. Because together she continues to blossom; together we continue to grow in love. And today? SHE is our face of brave.
Lisa Murphy
